18 ECONOMICS 



All this knowledge of the objects of economic endeavor not only 

 may be, but must be, made use of by the student who would attain 

 to the fullest understanding of the economic process. Paraphrasing 

 the words of the poet, the economist may well exclaim: I am a 

 man, and nothing that concerns the welfare of mankind is foreign 

 to me. 



At this point of view we may wonder whether any one ever could 

 have sincerely doubted the worth of history as an agent of economic 

 inquiry. Are not the fruits of a single generation of studies in 

 economic history sufficiently visible in the broadening perspective 

 of all contemporary inquiry? We wonder, again, whether any one 

 ever could have seriously doubted the scientific worth of the psy- 

 chological economics. Is it not amply vindicated by the increasing 

 keenness of the critical faculties now attacking every moot point in 

 theory? The subjective and the objective methods are not rivals, 

 but allies; not mutually exclusive, but mutually indispensable. In- 

 deed, they are not so much different methods as different hemispheres 

 of the complete globe of economic knowledge. 



The Economic Process. The ideal has found repeated expression 

 among students that economics should, much more truly and fully 

 than now, formulate the laws of industrial development of the 

 economic process. A number of progressive steps have been made 

 toward this end, which yet, however, appears a long way off. In- 

 deed, as yet no thinker has been able to tell us more than vaguely, 

 in terms of analogy with the biologic sciences, what such an economic 

 process is. The suggestion ventured before (p. 15) may be repeated, 

 that it may possibly be developed along the subjective and object- 

 ive lines of inquiry. We may study historically the conception of 

 value relations as it has unfolded in the minds of men. Parallel 

 with this is the development of the material environment of wealth 

 which reflects and embodies the value concept. The process of 

 valuation is carried to a certain stage in each generation, corre- 

 sponding to the process of industrial activity pursued by each 

 epoch. 



In each individual as he develops from childhood to maturity are 

 retraced the steps of the valuation process, and side by side at a given 

 moment are found within a single country the various family and 

 neighborhood economics at various stages of growth and complexity, 

 analogous to the different forms of plant and animal life. Some 

 such a conception is needed to make possible some unity in the 

 chaotic mass of historical and statistical material already available 

 to the student. The central thoughts may be economic desire and 

 will expressing themselves in acts and institutions, and in the eco- 

 nomic agents with which men have surrounded themselves. 



Economics as a science. As here discussed, economics is seen to 



